Life without Living
by Fae Rain
Summary: Ian thinking about life, death and a few other things inbetween.


A/N: Something different. ~shrugs~ I needed something to pass the time.  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
  
Summary: Ian thinking about life, death and a few other things inbetween.  
  
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The sun sets on another day of living as a shadow. The darkness couldn't be more welcome as I walk down one of the many alleys in new York. This alley is like myself, how I truly feel, dark, avoided and....unseen.  
  
Unseen, now there's an art form you don't hear of every day. Why? Because the one's who go 'unseen' no longer feel like life could see them. I mean, why would it? The world and it's inhabitants have deemed them unworthy, so why wouldn't life just follow that unspoken, 'unseen' routine?  
  
There isn't anyone on this planet who could possibly best me in what I do. At one point in time there may have been a few who stood the chance but all now lie in the arms of the earth, beyond even my ability to reach. I am the only one of my kind left, or the only one who is truly what we are suppose to be. I am a shadow and a worst fear.  
  
I watch as people hurry home. There are families who talk happily about a movie they have rented, a bussinessman on his cell phone, and a young mother worrying about the cost of heat for the coming winter as she carries her little girl in her arms. There are others, yes, but none have seen me. I got use to this fact when, as a child, I began my training.  
  
'A good warior is never seen, young Knottingham. He is silent and swift and always aware of his surroundings.' This like many of the lectures I recieved are among my first memories of life.  
  
Life.  
  
What I do isn't living. It never has been.  
  
At a tender age I learned I was different from others and no matter what I said or did, I could never claim their life styles. I could never be like them, like all the people who walk the street, never seeing one another and never caring for anything but one's own problems. I could never 'Live', not with the knowledge I now had of what goes into taking one of those lives so easily.   
  
It use to sadden me, in a sense, to know that the day would come when I would die alone. It use to sadden me, when I was old enough to understand, that I would never be loved by anyone besides Lady Death. I am her faithfull servant and in the numbness of this 'life' I am only too happy to gift her with blood and rage.   
  
She is the only one to have seen me.  
  
My master, my father never showed me affection. Praise was one word here and another there but never a 'I'm proud of you.' I am also his servant, one to do his bidding at his call.  
  
There are things I have seen, things I have done that would make the bravest of men flinch at my gaze and yet, many, my master's associates, know me as only Mr. Iron's guard. They fear me, there is no doubt but they look through me. None, even the citizens on the streets that I see daily, none could point me out in a crowd.   
  
There is one, though. She has seen me.  
  
What does one do when life as you know it changes? She smiles at me when no one has ever attemped such a thing in honesty. This woman talks to me and knows what I am likely to do in certain situations. She is beautiful and full of fire. She is the one I have been trained to protect at all costs and I have nearly lost my 'life' in doing so.  
  
Would this world still turn if someone such as myself stepped into it's light? I wish to do so, even for a day or less. To just walk down the street with only my worries and memories as company would be enough, so long as it was nothing like how I am now.   
  
Just a taste.   
  
That is all I ask.  
  
I wouldn't know what to do once I found myself out there among them and their chatter. What would a trained killer talk about over lunch?  
  
I look up suddenly when I realize just where my feet have led me and I hesitate for only the smallest second before climbing silently up to her window. As I had expected, she sits with a friend, the boy from the oddities shop. I can see her as she laughs and smiles and I wonder what it would be like to have her look at me like that. More or less, my concern is, would she ever look at me like that?   
  
I have no way of answering these questions and I sit just out of sight and watch as they talk and then fall silent to watch something that has come on the t.v. She falls asleep with her head on a lumpy couch pillow and he smiles down at her before grabbing a blanket off her bed and covering her sleeping form. Once he has departed I enter the loft quietly and make sure the door is locked before gently picking up the one I knew I would someday meet and protect.  
  
Placing her carefully on her large bed, I watch in fascination as she curls her body around a pillow. The red stone on her wrist swirls lazily, indicating that it's wearer is indeed sleeping soundly. Leaning closer I remove my glove to brush a stray brown hair away from her face and it takes all of my will power not to flinch when she moves her hand to brush gently, lightly against my own. The sensation lasts only a second before the warm fingers drop back down to the pale pillow.   
  
My heart seems to have abandoned me and I find that Iam holding my breath without realizing it.  
  
Maybe living wouldn't be so hard after all. 


End file.
